Yesterday`s tie-breaks brought very little surprise except the loss of the former World Champion GM Rustam Kasimdzhanov. Rustam is considered to be very strong in rapid games. Everybody remembers his victory in Tripoli 2004 that was achieved mainly due to his excellent performance in rapid chess. However, recently in Elista he lost to GM Boris Gelfand of Israel in a rapid game and here came again another loss. The Bulgarian GM Kirill Georgiev played in a defending style in the first four games but made them draws, and in the last blitz Kasimdzhanov just collapsed. .

Yesterday`s tie-breaks brought very little surprise except the loss of the former World Champion GM Rustam Kasimdzhanov. Rustam is considered to be very strong in rapid games. Everybody remembers his victory in Tripoli 2004 that was achieved mainly due to his excellent performance in rapid chess. However, recently in Elista he lost to GM Boris Gelfand of Israel in a rapid game and here came again another loss. The Bulgarian GM Kirill Georgiev played in a defending style in the first four games but made them draws, and in the last blitz Kasimdzhanov just collapsed.

Favourites Vassily Ivanchuk and Magnus Carlsen had no problems to knock out their opponents Alexander Galkin and Arkady Naiditsch. Ruslan Ponomariov beat Wang Hoa in a strange manner having used a new move in the Slavic defense invented by Kramnik in the World Blitz Championship. Apparently Wang Hao was completely unaware of this new novelty and it made the result of the game.

Ivan Cheparinov managed to beat the current European Champion Vladislav Tkachiev in the first blitz game and to make a draw in a bad position in the second one. Sergey Rublevsky was dominating in the match against David Navara and scored in his favour 2,5-1,5. Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu showed an excellent technique in the match against Zhao, Jun and knocked out him in two games. Zhou, Jianchao won Andrei Volokitin in the final sudden death game after the latter had managed to make a good comeback with black in the second blitz. Vladimir Malakhov won with the score 1,5-0,5 against his countryman Sergey Volkov.

Several matches were featured by blunders. Sergey Tiviakov and Alexnder Motylev dropped off a piece to their opponent from China and Vadim Zvjaginsev surprisingly lost in a dominating position with an extra pawn to GM Sasikiran Krishnan.

The number of the participants was eliminated to 32. It is becoming more and more difficult to predict a winner in the pairs. The only thing is obvious - chess skills are not enough to win the Championship, one will need strong nerves and stamina for it.